Gene V. Glass, one of the nation’s most distinguished education researchers, posted a blog about the experience of parents applying to a charter school in Arizona. Arizona is unusual in that it has no laws against nepotism or conflicts of interest. The Challenger Charter School is unusual in that it is owned by the former president of the State Board of Education and run by his wife and daughter. The family pays itself $400,000 a year for its services.
The post tells the story of parents who registered their child early for kindergarten in this school. They received a letter of acceptance. They had to fill out another form in March. On the second form, they noted that their daughter had had speech therapy, which they neglected to say in the first application. They were called into the school’s office where daughter and mother told them their child was unaccepted and would have to apply again through the open lottery. The administrators basically accused them of lying. Harsh words were exchanged. It was clear the school did not want their daughter.
Some of this interaction is captured in a video the family made during their interview.
The school’s message seems to be, children with any kind of disability, no matter how mild, are not wanted here. The IDEA laws don’t apply to charter schools in Arizona.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I read this post. In addition to the registration problem, the charter operaters were of-the-wall rude. I doubt if Arizona cares who operates charters. PArents should not enroll children in that school.
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I still do not understand why parents enroll their children in charter schools. This is an example of the rule rather than the exception.
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Simple. The top four reasons are :
1) Reputation/Results
2)Curriculum
3)Convenience
4)Quality of Teachers.
Read all about it at:
http://www.methodschools.org/blog/top-four-reasons-parents-choose-a-specific-charter-school
I am certain that there are other reasons. I would surmise, that parents know, that if, for any reason, they are dissatisfied, then they can withdraw their child from the school.
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Charles,
Parents don’t always make wise choices. In every charter that has been closed for fraud, there are students.
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We are in agreement. Parents do not always make wise choices, nor do they always make the best choices for their children.
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What made this school so attractive as opposed to the public schools? The case discussed here really does sound suspicious. In the end they were lucky to discover what the place was like ahead of time although I understand their desire to confront the school officials.
I am curious what made a Chinese immersion school so attractive to the mother of a son on the autism spectrum? Children on the autism spectrum typically have language difficulties. Somehow sending an English speaking child with language issues to a Chinese immersion school really does not sound like the smartest decision. It is really stretching state and/or federal law to demand placement in a school that is probably not suited to a child. I had a parent bring a psychologist to a meeting and read off accommodations provided in an previous IEP that had been superseded at the end of the previous year with a new one. The school rewrote the new IEP in this special meeting that essentially reinstated the old IEP to avoid confrontation, essentially wiping out any provision for growth over the previous plan. I had not written the current plan but was made to feel like I was ignoring the needs of the child. In that district, the parent was always right. They had the money to sue and cost the district money. I learned very quickly that the school would never defend the teacher. Tenured teachers could be successfully defended by the union. Probationary teachers were toast. I obviously have more than a passing interest because of my own experience. While I am opposed to charter schools, sometimes an issue is not just a charter issue. Charters in general seem much more likely to choose their students carefully and discourage those who don’t fit their model. Public schools have to take all children and find some way to educate them no matter what their (or their parents’) needs might be.
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Mr Miller symbolizes what is wrong with many charter management firms. They are guilty of using their insider track to enrich themselves. Of course, gathering up public funds is a “family business.” Without ethics and rules of conduct, this type of conflict of interest and flagrant profiteering will continue.
Parents of special needs students should have to be informed that there is no guarantee that a charter school will abide by IDEA. Many of the business people administering these schools probably are like DeVos, totally ignorant of haw to serve classified students effectively.
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retired teacher: a sober and pointed commentary.
And another example of why—to differing degrees depending on the situation and owners/investors/managers/salespeople—those pushing charters and privatization and vouchers and such very often resist transparency.
I would wager a bet, and feel sure to win it, that the operators of said charter are against the “burdensome” and “innovation killing” regulations of “big gubmint monopoly schools.” You know, like publicly declaring where they stand on such issues as: taking on all comers; treating students, parents and the general public with respect and courtesy; and providing accurate and timely information about who is a “good fit” and who isn’t at their place of business…
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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This story just leaves me speechless. It’s cruel, despicable and should be illegal in a sane world.
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Disgusting. It should go up on Facebook!
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This is what Secretary of Education DeVos wants for the entire country. I’m a public school teacher in Michigan and I can personally attest to how damaging she has been to education here. Arizona legislators should be ashamed of themselves.
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Here’s an ugly look inside a public school in TX. How low can we go these days? The trend is truly horrifying.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/us/terrorist-award-junior-high-school-backlash-trnd/
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Wow, what a video!
Watch it:
[video src="http://www.gvglass.info/video-1.mp4" /]
Wendy and Pam Miller, the two charter daughter-mother charter school officials, are cold as ice to parent Gene Glass and his wife. It’s chilling just watching this.
Early on, Wendy Miller, the younger charter school official on the right, is clearly irritated that the parents of the rejected child have shown up in person to challenge the charter school officials’ decision. In a passive-aggressive tone, she tells the parents that they had already been informed of the rejection of their child via voicemail “to avoid a potentially disappointing, awkward moment here (i.e. in person),” so what the-hell are you doing here?
How dare you put us through this ordeal by showing up in person? is the implied message from the two charter school officials, Wendy and Pam Miller … when the actual victims in this case are the Glasses/the parents and their child, and the bad guys are the two charter school officials Wendy and Pam Miller.
And it just goes downhill from here.
BOTTOM LINE: The Millers’ charter school, Challenge Charter School, is funded with taxpayer dollars, yet the Millers can still reject a child based on that child having even the mildest disability. Charter school officials can reject a child this way, and the Millers are doing just that here in the video, and there’s nothing the parents of that child can do about it.
What’s Orwellian about this video ls, is that the two officious charter school officials (the elder of the two, Pam Miller, being the charter school’s “founder”) repeatedly use the phrase “open enrollment” to describe the school’s admissions policy to the parents, when — through the questionaire on the charter school’s application — this school is anything but “open enrollment”, as any application from a child who has even the slightest disability is metaphorically thrown in the wastebasket by the Millers, once that disability is discovered by the Millers.
I mean, c’mon! That’s why the questions are on the form in the first place — to screen out any kids whom the Millers deem to be more difficult or more expensive to educate, and who may not deliver high standardized test scores.
It’s as if by repeating the words “open enrollment” over and over, the two charter school officials Wendy and Pam Miller will make it so.
Here’s the account of this from the child’s father, Gene Glass:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
GENE GLASS:
“So, yesterday we showed up anyway and signed in at the table in the gym where Wendy Miller was standing. She looked at our daughters name and just stood there.
“I said ‘Hi, are you the principal?’ and she said, ‘Yes, I am. Let’s go to my office.’
“As we were walking from the gym to her office, I explained that we were blind-sided by her voicemail, and that I would compare this to being accepted to college and then being told by the dean the day before that your enrollment is not being honored.
“She replied in a hostile and defensive manner ‘Don’t you dare be disrespectful to me like that do you understand? I am not going to have this.’ So I remained silent and we proceeded to walk into the main office where she stopped at her mom’s (Challenge Charter School founder Pam Miller’s) office and said,
” ‘I need back-up.’
“We proceeded to the conference room, and they both basically belittled us over a question about if there was any special needs help that our child has received. On the February updated information sheet we said ‘No.’ But on the March updated (Wendy called it a ‘refreshed form’) information sheet, we said ‘Yes, our daughter has received private OT speech therapy [which Wendy Miller in the attached video calls ‘significant” – we are not sure how she arrived at that considering how we simply wrote that she receives OT speech therapy.]
“The OT therapy we recently acquired for our daughter was (a) for speech enhancement (not that she has a speech problem) and (b) to help her not be frightened of loud noises (i.e., blender, public toilet flush, etc.). This was allowed by our health insurance, so we accepted these services. We never requested special assessment because our daughter does not require it. She was already assessed by her therapist and any special needs therapy or placement was ruled out.
“But apparently, Wendy and Pam Miller jumped to conclusions and made this off-the-cuff assumption. However, they never initiated a prior dialogue with us about this before jumping to their conclusion, which is apparently why they took away our daughter’s space.
“They claimed that if there is a mismatch of information between February’s and March’s form, then state law and their policy and procedures require that the parents lose their spot and have to complete new registration and be placed into a lottery. You will see from the attached video link that this is nonsense and that they have an ulterior motive (i.e., money/funding, etc). The fact of the matter is that the updated or ‘refreshed’ information on the forms they require will not necessarily always match. That’s the point of asking a parent to provide updated information (i.e., address change, etc.)
“Therefore, there’s obviously something else going on here, and there seems to be a lot of ‘wrongs’ happening. You will see in the attached video link (that I recorded on my cell phone) that the mother and daughter contradict one another, too, and, not to mention, are unprofessional school administrators (they have no checks and balances and there’s no fear of losing their job, so they can behave like this).
“One of the several contradictions you will notice in the video is when Wendy Miller says she doesn’t care what we wrote as the answer for the question at hand, but then her mother says that she’s already hired (her school staff) last month, and essentially doesn’t have the resources for special testing (which, again, we never asked for, and isn’t necessary, but we weren’t given the opportunity to explain that).
“Additionally, Pam Miller claims that we weren’t truthful on the form. I then replied by asking her if we were lying and she said ‘Yes.’ Remember, this is a kindergarten. We didn’t steal from their office or commit a felony here. There are several other contradictions, aside from them shutting us down from having an intellectually honest conversation.
“Pam Miller says that this is an open-enrollment school and that no one has a spot until the first day of school. Well, we received a congratulatory letter in the mail saying our daughter’s enrollment had been accepted. Her statement is nonsense because parents have to know if their child has a spot well before the first day so that they can then find other options if denied. You will see additional contradictions, and will see that Wendy Miller tells us that this conversation is over.
“I also have an 18-year-old boy (just graduated high school) and a 13-year-old girl (graduating 7th grade next week) in the Deer Valley Unified School District, and I’ve never experienced a crony capitalistic unprofessional school administration, like Challenge Charter School, up until now. It’s actually quiet shocking that this is allowed to continue without third-party inquiry into their inner-workings, especially since they are publically funded.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
… from
http://ed2worlds.blogspot.com/2017/05/a-citizens-encounter-with-charter-school.html
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Here’s a better link to the video:
[video src="http://www.gvglass.info/video-1.mp4" /]
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Ooops, I mis-spoke. Gene isn’t the parent. He’s relating the story of the parents.
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The politicians put laws into to benefit themselves and they’re the most corrupt POS in this country.
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Well, then: That’s what you get for applying to and supporting a charter school!
The mother and daughter team who run the charter would be eaten alive In Norway, for the most part. They are heinous and despicable.
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Here’s another article — this one from Massachusetts — about the operators of privately-managed charter schools failing to meet their legal requirement to serve special ed. students, and then using illegal means to push them out:
http://www.gazettenet.com/Former-Chinese-charter-school-parents-TKTK-9675337
GAZETTE:
“Just a month after her son had begun first grade at Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School, Shoshona King says Dimitri was already being pushed out the door.
“Dimitri, who is on the autism spectrum, started classes at the school in September 2009. Difficulties with the administration began, his mother says, at the very first meeting to review Dimitri’s federally mandated special education plan.
“ ‘They told me that they didn’t have services for him and I should consider sending him to a special school for the disabled,’ King said.
” … ”
” ‘She wanted him to fail,’ King said of Wang. ‘She did not want Dimitri in that school because he was nothing but dragging them down, and costing them money. He was more than what she wanted to deal with.’
“Ultimately, King made the difficult choice to pull Dimitri out of the school after just a year.
“ ‘I felt like, ‘Am I not serving the autism community by just pulling him out?’ Because legally he has the right to go,’ King said, referring to the fact that charter schools are considered public schools under state law, and are federally mandated to provide full services to students with disabilities.
“ ‘But I was just like, ‘I’m just beating my head against the wall, and he’s going to be the one that doesn’t get what he needs,’ she said.
“King is one of six former parents at the charter school who told the Gazette that they felt their children’s special needs were, at best, inadequately met at the school. Parents complained that their children were denied needed services, inappropriately disciplined for behaviors related to their disabilities or forced out altogether.”
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